In English crime series I often hear mom or mam or mum. I don't know...
What does it mean? When is an appropriate time to use it?
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Sign up to join this communityIn English crime series I often hear mom or mam or mum. I don't know...
What does it mean? When is an appropriate time to use it?
What you are hearing is not mum as in mother, but ma’am, contraction of madam, with a strongly reduced vowel. In British English, it is mostly used as a sign of repect for a woman of superior rank, say, in the military or police. In the film clip, Keeley Hawes appears to be playing the Prime Minister, whose bodyguard addresses her as ‘ma’am’ with the reduced vowel. At the end of this clip from Casino Royale, James Bond (Daniel Craig) addresses M (Judi Dench) in the same fashion.
In British English, the full vowel is reserved for royals:
On presentation to The Queen, the correct formal address is 'Your Majesty' and subsequently 'Ma'am,' pronounced with a short 'a,' as in 'jam'.
…
For other female members of the Royal Family the first address is conventionally 'Your Royal Highness' and subsequently 'Ma'am'.
In American English the vowel is never reduced and may be used as a polite form of addressing any woman, especially one unknown to the speaker:
Excuse me, ma’am, you’ve dropped your keys.
Some Americans might address younger women as miss in the same context.
As Chris H says in his comment to another answer in the context of the clip provided the person is addressed in the clip as "Ma'am" short for "Madam".
This is common practice in British English when military, police, fire service etc. junior members address a female person of superior rank to themselves. It is also done as an act of respect for other senior figures up to and including Her Majesty the Queen in some circumstances depending on protocol.
In the case of the Bodyguard which has already been shown in Britain on the BBC, the person addressed is actually a senior politician ( The Home Secretary, third most important Government post I think I did not watch it) rather than a police officer.
In every British series, it sounds to me like they are saying “MOM” (at least in American English that is how it would be spelled phonetically). From what I am gleaning in these posts, it seems that we are all hearing the same sound on both sides of the Atlantic, but the BrItish spell the sound differently than we do, aka pronounce the vowels differently. Also, they may have different rules of pronunciation for the consonant -vowel-consonant combination, such as in Smerican English, the CvC combo generally uses the short form pronunciation of the vowel (not always, though).
When Britain says and spell mum and the American says and spell mom it is so distinctively easy to tell. Cos coming from us Canadian we spelt it M.O.M we still pronounce it as (MUM). Majority of Canadians don't know this, so they think we pronounce MOM the same as American pronounce it which couldn't even be further than the truth. I usually thought that until I was reading some Canadian pronunciation out of curiosity, while ago
It means 'mother', and is used by someone when speaking to their mother, or about their mother or someone else's mother. Some people do call their mother 'mother', either because they were brought up to do so or as a sign of exasperation with the mother's behaviour.
It is an informal usage, but them relationships with one's mother tend to be informal.
The use is not limited to UK English, in American TV and film the word 'mom' is frequent, especially these days in terms of 'Soccer mom'.